Researcher Finds No Link Between Violent Games and School Shootings 116
GamePolitics writes "A researcher at Texas A&M International University has found no link between playing violent video games and school shootings. Prof. Christopher Ferguson cites 'moral panic' and criticizes politicians, the news media and some social scientists for playing up what he believes is a false connection between video games and school shooting incidents. Quoting: 'Actual causes of violent crime, such as family environment, genetics, poverty, and inequality, are oftentimes difficult, controversial, and intractable problems. By contrast, video games present something of a "straw man" by which politicians can create an appearance of taking action against crime.'"
Not surprised (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course not... Choir, meet the preacher.
"...And?" Indeed. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, something every person who plays games already knows.
Well, I was thinking the same thing, except from the opposite direction. I'm was kind of skeptical about how he might have showed no link given the small sample group of school shooters and the difficulty in finding actual video game links, but there's really nothing of the sort here. He's largely just criticizing the methodology (or complete lack thereof) of most people howling about the link between video games and school shootings.
He's basically doing little more than pointing out the obvious, but not really proving his own point. It's very much a, "Here's some common sense, here's where most of the people talking about the supposed connection betray their ignorance, and here's some outrage and politics too" kind of article. Less science than editorial. (One with a decent point mind you, but let's not pretend this is proof of the opposite. He's just calling "BS.")
Sometimes that's enough (Score:5, Insightful)
And technically, since we're talking science, that's enough disproof. The burden of proof lies on the one who claims to have a proof. Pointing out the holes in his proof is disproof enough. You don't have to prove the opposite, which sometimes is even impossible or unfeasible.
E.g., if I claim to have proof that extraterrestrials live among us in disguise, it's up to me to prove that, not up to you to prove that all 6 billion humans on Earth were born on Earth. The latter would be unreasonably hard a "proof" to do, and frankly it's not your burden to do. (Much as various nuts and fanatics like to pretend that it's your job to prove them wrong, and they're right if you don't.) But if you can find big enough holes in my data or methodology, that's actually disproof enough.
Ditto for games. It's very hard to prove, especially for someone who's already dead, that games absolutely didn't have an influence on him. You can't resurrect him and haul him to a shrink. Now picture doing that for a few hundreds of people. It's unreasonable, and, again, it's frankly not your burden of proof. The ones who claim that the link between games and violence exist, and even use it as a true premise to base further rationale on (e.g., that therefore this or that legislation is needed), those have to first prove it. If you can poke holes in their proof, that's disproof enough.
So to summarize it, the answer to your "let's not pretend this is proof of the opposite" is: he doesn't have to prove the opposite in the first place.
In the end, probably what we actually need is actually less people getting suck(er)ed into the game of accepting that they have to prove the opposite, and more people who just call BS until the ones making the claim presented a good enough proof. Once you accept the burden of proving the opposite, essentially you've accepted that unless you can do the unreasonable !X proof, the bullshitter is right. That's already playing their game. They just need to be slapped silly with the notion of who has to prove what, and that an unproven claim is null and void and not to be taken any more seriously than opinionated gossip overheard on a plane.
Re: (Score:1)
They just need to be slapped silly with the notion of who has to prove what, and that an unproven claim is null and void and not to be taken any more seriously than opinionated gossip overheard on a plane.
Absolutely brilliant post. Dead on the mark.
Re: (Score:2)
To give you an example of this consider pharmaceuticals. If I create a new drug that in 99 of my 100 test cases cures cancer should I be allowed to sell it immediately? Or should their be a requirement that I 'prove' it isn't dangerous with further medical trials?
In the above case I have 'proven' to some degree that it works, and there is no proof it is dangerous and "since we're talking sc
I see no fundamental problem there (Score:3, Insightful)
I see no fundamental problem there. Essentially you're legally required to make a claim that your medicine (A) works better than placebo, and (B) you know and disclose the risks and potential side effects. And you're required to prove it.
The requirement part comes from having such bad experiences as someone selling sulpha dilluted in ethylene glycol... which is a very deadly poison, and actually killed everyone who took that medicine. In excruciating pain, over a couple of weeks. So now if you don't or can'
Re: (Score:1)
But that's largely a legal construct, and has nothing to do with how logic works or how burden of proof works. We as a society decided that you _must_ make and prove that kind of claims.
So if society decides you need to prove that your new media immersive experiences do not cause people to go on shooting sprees, that's exactly what you need to do (for some close statistical approximation of "proof").
The "burden of proof" does not exist in isolation of the risks and benefits involved -- which are for people, not logic, to decide.
Re: (Score:2)
1. Yes, it is entirely within the society's rights to decide that it requires certain standards of proof that your game doesn't cause people to run amok.
But even there it would first need to figure out such an impartial double-blind test, that's possible to pass. For medicine we have it. I don't think any of the "OMG, games turn people psycho" crowd actually made even a valid correlation, much less a scientific test there.
2. In medicine's case the FDA first had to make its own claim, and prove it, namely th
Re: (Score:2)
The idiot who sold a solution of sulpha in ethylene glycol, essentially made that case and proof for them. Somebody had sold a medicine which didn't just sometimes not work, and didn't just sometimes kill its patients. It killed _every_ single person who took it.
Obligatory Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]
Or from the FDA itself (Score:2)
Or from the FDA itself: http://www.fda.gov/oc/history/elixir.html [fda.gov]
Re: (Score:1)
Good points, well made!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I just read the original researc
effect size (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about that... I play guild wars, and I'm training my calico cat to attack on command... just having a little trouble figuring out how to get us both +1 health regeneration and 33% faster attack speed...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, a logical argument in science does not constitute disproof. While it's fair to say the burden of proof is on the claimant, not being able to prove a claim doesn't prove the inverse.
As GP points out, any kind of statistical correlation with school shootings will be very difficult, due to the rarity of shootings. I think we all know there's no direct effect -- in no case was the shooting an immediate, direct result of the video game. The researcher points out that no studies are able to show a video game-
Re: (Score:2)
Given that, I'll present myself as the hole in the "violent games cause realworld violence" theory.
When I am supremely angry and sincerely wish to kill someone (and we've all been there!) the best thing I can do to cool down is ... fire up DOOM and slaughter a few thousand innocent hellspawn. After a couple hours of that, I'm relaxed and no longer angry. Great therapy!
Of course, the conclusion the moralists would draw is that violent people should go to hell, where they can freely indulge their violent tend
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly, we're not talking science here. We're talking about public opinion and/or politician opinion. That's what passes laws.
When people get hurt, the public rightly wants to know, "Why?" If someone tells them that the culprit* [wikipedia.org] is video games, they're inclined to believe it because (a) video games are easy to ban, (b) video games are something they didn't like in the first place, (c) blaming video games means that the problem isn't their fault, etc.
Forget logic and rhetoric: if we want to sway public op
Blame me? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry, you can just blame it on your parents, and they on theirs, and so on. The real culprit is Adam or amoeba, whichever you prefer.
Or you could blame the little psycho who pulled the trigger.
Re: (Score:1)
Why stop at amoeba? It's the laws of physics which cause me to behave selfishly :)
Video games don't have a monopoly on violence. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it just video games that are subject to all this scrutiny? Board games cause violence too.
My sister was perfectly capable of flying into a murderous rage if someone else purchased Boardwalk or Park Place in a game of Monopoly when we were kids.
Re:Video games don't have a monopoly on violence. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it just video games that are subject to all this scrutiny?
Video games are subject to this scrutiny for two reasons:
1) There was once a study along time ago showing that kids exposed to aggressive TV acted out aggressively afterward. A host of studies since then have alleged the same effect from video games. Studies have supported and refuted both ideas, and people have also called into question the link between aggressive play behavior and real world aggression. Unfortunately, a lot of the research and reporting on the research on both sides seems to be heavily tainted by preconceived bias.
2) Video games are a form of recreational media enjoyed by a substantial number of youths today, and they are often avoided by excessive moralists, who tend not to "get" what "the kids" are into. We did the same thing with rock & roll, rap music, tabletop gaming, etc.
It's one half politicized science and one half culture war.
Board games cause violence too.
My sister was perfectly capable of flying into a murderous rage if someone else purchased Boardwalk or Park Place in a game of Monopoly when we were kids.
Oh, pfft. You know there's a difference between something that is alleged to provoke violence and something which is just fought over. Let's not be silly.
Like Dodgeball? (Score:2)
Seems like an obvious candidate to me. I mean, you're taught to *throw* something at someone, with the intention of hitting them "out."
Anyone up for a round of Lawn Darts Dodgeball?
Re: (Score:2)
You may joke, but there were similar scaremongering campains concerning D&D & Warhammer FRP back in the 80s. Before that, it was heavy metal music.
There are some people who can always find something to get outraged about.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Card games cause violence too. My coworker got me into the Nuclear War Card Game [flyingbuffalo.com] and now I keep a stockpile of ICBMs just in case. Come to think of it, my neighbor has been blocking us in with the way they park their car. *pushes button*
Wrong time to release study. (Score:2)
Recession is on.
Politicians don't have idle time to persecute random innocent everyday activities anymore.
Should have sat on it until the economy was well into recovery territory.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope this is the perfect time. Since we're in a down turn, it's the perfect time to start slapping away at innocent activities in order to protect people as fear sets in.
Sudden (Score:4, Insightful)
Sudden outbreak of ... he'll be completely ignored.
Let's face it, saying "The new shiny thing that you barely know anything about, is the true responsible for all the evils" will always work better for the news than "There's just about the same percentage of bad people as always, nothing to see here, move along."
Re: (Score:2)
Video games don't incite violence (Score:1)
Monopoly is the closest thing to domestic violence between siblings you can get.
Totopoly just makes you want to throw the game board at the wall out of sheer fucking boredom.
Then we have the game of Whack-a-mole played with people with absolutely no hand-eye co-ordination.
Golf involves swinging metal clubs in a wide swiping motion.
Tennis requires the constant violence against a small furry ball which PETA could easily say represents a small mammal.
Cricket is self inflicted pain, there is a *wrong* way to ca
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, they want you to start calling them "court kittens" cause no one wants to hit a kitten.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I could take environmental responsibility when it was things like "reduce, reuse, recycle" but I cant take them seriously any more, they are just a bunch of nut cases these days. Sea Kittens my arse.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
And this is why the "moderate-sounding" outfits like HSUS are so much more dangerous than the lunatic fringes: HSUS has exactly the same goals as PETA, but HSUS has learned diplomacy. So while PETA tries to make kids think of fish as "sea kittens" and everyone laughs at the absurdity, HSUS quietly gets fish farming outlawed.
(Don't think so? Check out the recently passed CA Prop 2, which outlaws modern egg production.)
Re: (Score:2)
Also,
No stupid, it's child porn that causes violence (Score:4, Funny)
So we need to stop selling cameras.
Re: (Score:1)
I thought it was music that caused school shootings?
Games cause all other violent behaviour.
They should keep their stories straight.
What about the easy availability of guns ? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Spot the correlation.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
No, but it certainly means the crime is a lot less deadly.
Not really. Availability of guns in a society does not seem to correlate with the number of violent deaths and murders. Maybe this is because people don't fight back if the mugger has a gun or maybe more muggers actually attack a victim from behind injuring or killing them rather than just threatening with a gun. Or maybe more people are able to defend themselves and escape without injury because they have a gun themselves. In some places where guns are rare, drive by attacks use pipe bombs and molotov cock
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
In short, you aren't presenting any factual information either.
I've read quite a few papers, but it doesn't matter because I'm not the one making an assertion.
If we are talking about these attacks on school campuses, I think it is fairly obvious that if the killers didn't have guns, they would be a lot less effective.
You think that is obvious? You don't think poison or a big bomb might be a lot more effective? I'd argue that largely untrained children with guns are a lot less effective than other techniques they could turn to or at the very least you need to provide some data if you want me to accept this hypothesis.
And you can pick and choose what countries you want to talk about to make the statistics look like guns make things more safe or less safe.
Pick and choose? If you can pick different countries with completely different rates of violence and gun owners
Re: (Score:2)
You think that is obvious? You don't think poison or a big bomb might be a lot more effective? I'd argue that largely untrained children with guns are a lot less effective than other techniques they could turn to or at the very least you need to provide some data if you want me to accept this hypothesis.
Since when do we not restrict people having large explosives or biological weapons? Just because the GP didn't mention these weapons, you assume that he wants to restrict guns but not restrict explosives. Talk about a fucking straw man, sheesh.
But I think what the OP says is true. Restrict people from having guns, school attacks will be less deadly.
Okay, you think that. Why do you think that? Do you have any information or is it just based upon emotion? Do you have any actual studies to back up your hypothesis or is it completely untested?
Do people need to make a hypothesis for every claim they make? Come on, man. The GP is obviously just using some common sense. If you got attacked by a mugger, would you rather be mugged by an armed person or not? Don't be stupid.
Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
You think that is obvious? You don't think poison or a big bomb might be a lot more effective?
Since when do we not restrict people having large explosives or biological weapons?
Since when does poison=biological weapon? We do very little to restrict the purchase of poison because so much of what we use every day is poisonous in the wrong context. As for explosives, any kid who can get ahold of their parent's guns can get instructions for making bombs out of everyday materials. I know I made some as a kid, just for fun.
Just because the GP didn't mention these weapons, you assume that he wants to restrict guns but not restrict explosives.
No, I assumed you didn't want to stupidly try to restrict access to everything starting with guns then moving into knives and swords and sticks and anything heavy and
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Murders are about 3 times more common per capita in the US than the UK.
This is exactly what I was talking about. You take two countries that are very different in many ways and compare the rates of murder. Then you state that it doesn't prove gun control is the differentiating factor. Scientifically, how does one go about determining what the most likely causality is? You increase your sample size and look at many countries and look for traits that correlate across many of them.
But there's no need for us to do it. Several studies have already looked at this on a large scale. O
Re: (Score:2)
Could bombs and poison be more effective? Sure. Have we had a big attack on college campuses using those? No. Most likely if they didn't have guns they would use the easily available tools like swords and knives which would mean many fewer losses. So many things can go wrong with bombs an
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
Actually, you were making an assertion as much as the post you replied to did. You can't counter someone by saying you read a bunch of stuff that says something else but then not bother to back it up by linking them.
No, I said I've read a lot of papers and none have shown a strong correlation. You can't prove a negative. If someone says there is a correlation, the onus is on them to show it, not on me to go through every single study and show there isn't one shown in any of them.
Could bombs and poison be more effective? Sure. Have we had a big attack on college campuses using those? No. Most likely if they didn't have guns they would use the easily available tools like swords and knives which would mean many fewer losses.
And what are you basing this last assumption on? It's yet another assertion without any support. In general no one has shown that gun bans have reduced violence or murder rates. You can assume that does not hold true in schools, but that doesn'
Re:What about the easy availability of guns ? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering the three cases you've linked, the death toll at Dunblane was 17. The total death toll of the other two (despite the "impressive" flame-thrower) was 0. It's impossible to say if people would definitely have been killed if the men in those cases had access
They are SUICIDES, not merely mass murders (Score:2)
What most people don't seem to recognise is that these "school shootings" (or flame throwers, or whatever) and similar "going postal" events are NOT intended as mass murders.
They are intended as loud, messy SUICIDES, that "show the world how much it hurt me by hurting it back".
Re: (Score:1)
As fast as your country is goosestepping towards fascism, I wouldn't be too happy about that.
Re: (Score:1)
Goose-stepping, are you mad.
We've formed an orderly queue and are waiting for it to turn up. If anything we are shuffling towards something.
Of course we know what will happen. You wait for one form of authoritarian government to turn up for years and then 3 turn up at once. I would say more Stalinist than Fascist anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
"Goose-stepping, are you mad.
We've formed an orderly queue and are waiting for it to turn up."
Made me laugh. My co-workers are now even more convinced that I am insane.
With regards to your distinction between Stalinism and Fascism, I've come to believe that there is really little difference aside from aesthetics and what the thugs babble about when beating you to death. My personal preference is for either totalitarian socialism (nationalist and internationalist are both covered) or Marxist-Fascism (makes
Re: (Score:1)
Indeed. If only we had guns like in America, we'd be able to keep our government entirely free of corruption!
Re: (Score:1)
Nice straw-man.
I wasn't talking about corruption. I was talking about the fast-track to an Orwellian society that the UK has been on for the past decade or so.
Re: (Score:1)
Do you honestly think that Bush's administration was any better WRT removal of civil rights?
Re: (Score:1)
The administration that is disgraced, out the door & is in the process of having a lot of the bad, illegal things that they pulled in their tenure reversed or revoked?
This isn't about the US. We have the option of removing our government by force if needed. That option has never been played & hopefully will never have to be played. But we still have that option & our government, deep down, knows it.
Either you guys like fascism or your government has stopped listening to you a long, long time
Re: (Score:1)
The administration that is disgraced, out the door & is in the process of having a lot of the bad, illegal things that they pulled in their tenure reversed or revoked?
No, the one that you kept voting in to the incredulity of the rest of the world, whose approval only crashed as a result of an economic house of cards not of its own making, and whose president only left the White House because he had limited tenure from the start?
This isn't about the US.
Um, I think you'll find it is. Check the thread all the way back up to its first ancestor.
We have the option of removing our government by force if needed. That option has never been played & hopefully will never have to be played. But we still have that option & our government, deep down, knows it.
We also have that option -- our weapons are only marginally less effective than those at the government's disposal as yours are (perhaps, indeed, in Britain
Re: (Score:1)
"But our countries are still ruled by corporations."
Fixed that for you.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
In the UK guns are not as easy to get hold of as in the USA. We don't have school shootings. Spot the correlation.
In the US wooden clogs are harder to get ahold of as in Europe in general. We don't have clog beatings. Spot the correlation.
Or you could, you know, define the problem sensibly in terms of violent crime or murders at schools. There are countries with higher rates of gun ownership than the UK, but lower rates of violent crime and school murders. What does that imply about the causality of your correlation?
The truth is if you look objectively you can find things that correlate very strongly with violent crim
Re: (Score:2)
In the US wooden clogs are harder to get ahold of as in Europe in general. We don't have clog beatings. Spot the correlation.
Spot the last time 17 people were killing a "school clogging" by a teenager, and the SWAT team had to be called out. It's not about some arbitrary choice of weapons to hate but about the effectiveness of them.
Re: (Score:2)
Spot the last time 17 people were killing a "school clogging" by a teenager...
I don't know of any, but I can point out the last time there was a school massacre using a duffle bag or while wearing a sweatshirt. Should we ban those based upon studies that show if they are banned there are fewer killings by people with them? Or do you concede such a methodology is flawed?
It's not about some arbitrary choice of weapons to hate but about the effectiveness of them.
Fine, so demonstrate banning them reduces violence or that other weapons such as improvised explosives or poisons are less effective. You can't just make blanket statements that it is more effective or that bans help w
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know of any, but I can point out the last time there was a school massacre using a duffle bag or while wearing a sweatshirt. Should we ban those based upon studies that show if they are banned there are fewer killings by people with them? Or do you concede such a methodology is flawed?
You're honestly telling us that people have gone on a school massacre using a duffle bag or a sweatshirt as their killing weapon? Or are you honestly so stupid that you think there's no significant, causal relationship between the gun and the deaths involved?
I mean, who do you think you're impressing with this line of reasoning? "Gosh! I'll bet all these school shooters have hair! Maybe we should ban hair? (Because, obviously weapons used are no more important to a school shooting than the presence of
Re: (Score:2)
You're honestly telling us that people have gone on a school massacre using a duffle bag or a sweatshirt as their killing weapon? Or are you honestly so stupid that you think there's no significant, causal relationship between the gun and the deaths involved?
Are you dense? I'm saying you have to actually show a causal relationship, you can't just assume if guns are less common there will be fewer deaths instead of just fewer deaths with guns (which no one but anti-gun people are interested in).
I mean, who do you think you're impressing with this line of reasoning? "Gosh! I'll bet all these school shooters have hair! Maybe we should ban hair?
Whoosh, my point has gone over your head several times now. What I'm saying is if you ban hair you will have fewer deaths caused by people with hair... not fewer deaths overall. Hence and study which shows fewer deaths by a method is useless , whether that is fewer death
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
You win the "completely invalid comparison" award with that doozy. Shoes - Guns? Come on.
Actually it was an example of how logically flawed the idea of anything that reduces "gun violence" is a good thing regardless of the effects upon overall crime and violence rates. Drawing a correlation between the prevalance of one object and the prevalance of that object when crime occurs is pointless and misleading. The absurd idea being that in places where people have more hats or guns, a ban on hats or guns can reduce the rate of hat wearing or gun using criminals and that means anything useful.
You Southern gunslingers are all alike, I swear.
I live
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Canada does have guns. They don't have school shootings.
Here in Australia we don't have guns (it's neigh impossible to get anything at all these days, believe me I have tried). Per capita, we've had a shitload of people going on killing sprees with guns.
What's this correlation I'm supposed to see? That gaining your independence from England makes you more likely to be a psychopath? Interesting.
Re: (Score:2)
There was a rather famous one at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal 20 years ago... (rather sad, too, since the gunman
Bath School Massacre (Score:2)
To date the worst school massacre took place in Michigan in 1927. Although it wasn't a student I guarantee it wasn't video games that pushed him over the edge either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster [wikipedia.org]
What do you think would happen today if someone blew up an entire school wing? They'd have tons of scapegoats instead of focusing on the unique circumstances which made the PERSON who was RESPONSIBLE.
Re: (Score:2)
That doesn't hold a candle to the Chechen school massacre [wikipedia.org].
Link to the paper (Score:2)
Hi,
the article mentions a paper and has a link to it. But the link doesn't work and i can't find the paper by searching for the author on that server.
Has anyone a working link?
Sincerely yours, Martin
Re: (Score:2)
Psychology is an exact science? (Score:1)
Now I'm not gonna say there is or is not a link, I don't know.
But since when have researchers mapped the behaviour of the brain and the way it reacts to certain gaming or television related stuff?
They are just guessing according to the things they have experienced and learned.
Maybe they are asking themselves the wrong questions and making the wrong assumptions.
Just remember that psychology is not really founded upon exact measurements.
Ohhhh wait, it is just a _single_ judgement, made by 1 person, 1 point of
It was only a matter of time (Score:1)
What, again? (Score:2)
Lots of these reports comming out lately.
How about a completely different angle? (Score:4, Insightful)
How many people have been going on killing sprees because they said God told them it was a swell idea? Yet nobody discusses outlawing religion, or keeping it away from the feeble minds of small children.
Re: (Score:1)
Mr. Hitchens, is that you?!?
And let's be frank: the Crusades were less of a "killing spree" and more of a semi-organized "pillage and rampine" operation...of which the Church took a cut.
Except for the Children's Crusade. How about that for "think of the Children"...
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? I'm not even talking about the Crusades.
Didn't notice it? Someone going out and killing random people, then when he's caught you get to hear that God or Jesus told him it would be great if he went and killed some people, so he went and did just that. Not somewhere in medieval times, right here, right now.
Well, "here" being the US. Funny enough, I can't remember a single incident in Europe. The combination "gun nut" + "religious nut" isn't so popular here.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
1) Shooting People
2) Making People think you're going to shoot them
Please, enlighten me how else a handgun can be used as a tool.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, some people think it's a good idea to do it with games, care to inform me where is the difference? I mean, except that nobody so far said "Well, Doom told me it's a good idea to kill people".
I'll kill you all (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
We all know about the correlation between mainstream gaming and illiteracy, but what does it have to do with this story?
I see both sides (Score:1)
The flip side to this is that every publicized school shooting was perpetrated by students who were playing violent video games. In essence, not every gamer is a school sh
Re: (Score:2)
Please cite an example of a non-Amish male teen that has never played a violent video game
It's not that the crazy ones play violent video games. All young males these days play video games, and the majority of them include violence
(Females being far less likely to 1) play video games or 2) shoot up a school. Maybe we need to ban young males from schools.)
is that so? (Score:1)
psychopaths prone to attraction to violence? (Score:2)
In my opinion, thanks for asking, psychopaths are attracted to violent entertainment, because it is violent and they are psychopaths. For others (normal-ish people) the violence isn't real (because it is a game, after all) and it is fun. Your over or underweight gaming fanatic probably plays vastly more of this stuff than anyone else and killing large swaths of people at school would cut into his gaming time.
bullying (Score:1)
Seek the link between bullying and school shootings. It won't be hard to find.
As a casual observer I see that a character named Rocky was the bane of the Trench Coat Mafia. Doubtlessly there were other influences for Klebold and Harris, but those influences are accounted for in a larger bullying dynamic.
Its about effeciency (Score:1)
Don't Linch Me (Score:2)
(In my apparent desire to be burned at the stake by all other Slashdoters, I would like to make a contradictory statement. It's short, I promise.)
School shootings are the manifestation of some sort of breakdown among a few people because we have a culture of violence. Video games are, without a doubt, part of that culture.
Politicians demonize violent video games and then go attend the latest military parade.
Link between violent crime and schooling (Score:2)
There is a 99.9% Link between violent crime and schooling. 99.9% of all perpetrators of violent crime have a history of going to school, whether it is preschool, kindergarten, primary, secondary, tertiary, private, or public schools, whether for long or short periods. Therefore I urge you all to Think of the Children, and immediately BAN all forms of school, where no doubt violent criminals of the future are being trained.
Pointless (Score:1)
These studies are fucking dumb. Actually, most sociological studies a fucking dumb. The "researchers" already had a conclusion and they conducted "studies" until their conclusion was reached in some abstract way. This isn't like the natural sciences where a definitive conclusion can be reached, so despite questionable results, they will never be able to be refuted.
All these "video games cause x behavior" studies are a waste of time and money. Has anyone considered that different people react to video games